If you haven’t tried online casinos before then probably the first question that comes to your mind is, are online casinos rigged? As a player, you would think that casinos could easily manipulate the games in their favor and you wouldn’t know about it or be able to prove it. This is probably the biggest hurdle online casinos must go through to earn the trust of new players. Overall most online casinos games you will encounter won’t be rigged as long as that casino has a gaming license. Every game provides the house with a natural edge; there’s little reason to artificially inflate this and any decent regulator or licensing body will ensure rigorous testing to ensure games perform within mathematically defined and acceptable parameters. [pullquote]Your best form of research to know which casinos are trustworthy and which casino games are legit are casino communities that protect the player like thepogg.com which is The Players Online Gambling Guide.[/pullquote]
The short answer to the question ‘are casino games are rigged?’ is that they rarely are and most of the time when casinos and software companies are caught rigging games, they pay a steep price. When they are exposed, it severely harms their reputation which trickles down to their marketing partners. When it comes to casinos, they should be making money regardless, so they don’t need to rig any games and when it happens, it shows the gaming company in question has no ethics or inadequate game testing procedures. Most of these companies either go out of business or they lose so much of it that it prevents them from getting more business and as a result, players.
Regulation And Licensing Of Online Casinos
Online casinos usually have their servers in a country where they have a gaming license. These license jurisdictions assume some responsibility for ensuring that the games offered through that gaming license are tested and fair. Anytime they are not, it has the risk of jeopardizing the reputation of that licensing body, and it’s just something that is in nobody’s best interest. The most reputable licensing body that exists is the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC), so any casino that has this seal on their site is highly likely to be safe. No license will every be an absolute guarantee – any human process is open to error – but this is a very good starting point.
Casino Softwares & Auditing
Experienced casino players will be familiar with a lot of the terminology and casino software names used. These represent games made by a company no different than in land based casinos. Land base casino software are tested and regulated, and you’ll rarely hear about rigged games, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen either. For land based casinos, it’s tough for players or any organization to have the means of recording the data to analyze for fairness. When it comes to online gambling, we have the luxury of screencasting and recording our sessions. In some cases, casinos will provide you the raw data of the hand histories which can be further analyzed and done quickly. Some examples of land-based gaming companies include IGT, Novomatic, Scientific Games and Bally. The more popular online casino software includes Microgaming, Net Entertainment, Playtech, and QuickSpin.
ThePOGG offers casino game fairness reports which they use maths analysis to prove to a high degree of certainty when casino games are fair and when they might be rigged. For a list of fairness reports see thepogg.com.
Stolen Casino Games
Despite everything stated above, there are gaming groups out there that are stealing game software by illegally reproducing their own versions of copyrighted games without permission. The most common example is Net Entertainment whose games have been widely cloned and distributed without paying royalties. In situations like this, the casino hosting the games can’t be assumed to be running fair games, so it’s important to avoid any casino that has been caught using counterfeit games.
Online Casino Review Sites
Sites that offer online casino reviews and casino forums are just as important as sites like TripAdvisor and others where real users can rate businesses. This type of feedback is important, and for casino players it is key. When players have a bad experience with any online casino, one of the first things they do is seek out a forum where they can share their negative experience to ensure that it doesn’t happen to players. These communities represent a voice to players.
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